You'll always do better with your own node.
EDIT: assuming you have the bandwidth for it.
Question on this...
What kind of sustained bandwidth does a normal mining operation consume? I have a 30MB up/down pipe and was wondering what I should allocate. I can build a DMZ for my local P2Pool server to run on, and set the limits on bandwidth. Would 2MB be enough? More?
Almost a negligible amount...
My node, with 35 peers and a bunch of miners averages around 20kB/s
http://imgur.com/4f3P2l9